Friday, September 24, 2010

Team Lotus name officially sold. Tony Fernandes has the rights.

Today, I received my usual Lotus Racing update via email.
The email comes from www.lotusracing.my Tom Webb
Here is a portion of the content:Tony Fernandes, Lotus Racing Team Principal, is delighted that the hard work that has been going on behind the scenes to make this acquisition can now be announced, saying: “Kamarudin, Nasa and I are absolutely delighted to have completed this transaction - It’s difficult to express just what it means to us to now be able to say we are Team Lotus, one of the most iconic names in any form of sport worldwide, but we have been working very hard to make this dream come true, and today it has. My thanks go to David for looking after the Team Lotus brand so well over the period of his stewardship, and keeping the integrity of Team Lotus together. We are very excited about now taking over the brand and after our first year in Formula One™, we believe we are ready to do justice to the legacy we have inherited. These are heady days for Team Lotus, and it will be a very exciting process for the team we have in place to help us achieve our goals, on and off track.

Fair enough. Proton, the owners of Lotus are official sponsors of Tony. So they have a finger in the pie whether Team Lotus is owned by Tony and his business associates or Group Lotus.

Historically, both Lotus Cars and Team Lotus came under Colin Chapman.

Times change.

Both Tony Fernandes and Dany Bahar (Group Lotus CEO) appear to know where they are heading.
Group Lotus are still in racing, but not under the Team Lotus banner.

I have no axe to grind with either party. It's a big world, I'm sure there is enough room for both of them.
I still see this project taking off in Johor... However, here is my Bernama TV interview based on the initial idea of using the SepangF1 circuit.